Astrology from Ancient Egypt

Sir Norman Lockyer, founding editor of the leading scientific journal Nature, and discoverer of the second element, helium, is a primary source for beginning to understand Egyptian astrology. Lockyer’s great book, The Dawn of Astronomy – Temple Worship in Ancient Egypt, explains how the Egyptians aligned their temples as horizontal telescopes, pointing to the spot on the horizon where they knew a star would rise each night. Temples of Egypt point to the sun, Sirius, Canopus and other bright stars. The heliacal rising of Sirius, the first day each year it becomes visible before dawn, provided the Egyptians with a highly accurate stellar clock of the year over millennia of observation. Their temples were established to observe the cosmos, providing a link between the mundane world and the eternal stars.

From the day it first becomes visible at the start of summer, Sirius rises four minutes earlier each night, until in December it is already above the horizon at dusk. Lockyer explains how we know the ancients were aware of the big movement of precession of the equinox well before Greek times. Major Egyptian temples are aligned to the rising point of particular stars. However, due to precession this rising point shifted over the millennia. We see that under and alongside the existing temples, for example at Dendera and Karnak, are foundations of older temples which pointed to where the star was at an earlier time. Lockyer explains how the Egyptians must have noticed that their star temples no longer operated as before. When Sirius rises in the eastern sky, it sends a shaft of light along the long corridor of the temple opening. The early Greek historian Herodotus explained how in Phoenicia, this method was used by priests to light up a large gemstone, an emerald, in the sanctuary of the temple.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/Art2.html

As part of their star worship, the Egyptians observed the night sky carefully for thousands of years in the bright dark desert night. Their close knowledge of the positions of all the stars as markers of time enabled them to see the larger cycles that structure the movement of the earth against the cosmos. These cycles, with the day and year as wheels of time within the big slow wheel of precession, are mentioned by the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, in his image of wheels within wheels framed by the four living creatures, or angels.

These four angels of Ezekiel appear again in Revelation. They mark the four cardinal points of the sky, the zodiac stars Aldebaran in Taurus the Bull, Regulus in Leo the Lion, Antares in Scorpio the scorpion/eagle, and Fomalhaut in Aquarius the man. These four living creatures stand before Osiris in the hall of the dead as the four sons of Horus. They later became the four evangelists around the throne of Christ. They are primary markers of precession of the equinox, having formerly, during the Age of Taurus, occupied the cardinal points where the sun entered each season, moving then through mid season, marking the fixed signs during the Age of Aries, and late season, marking the mutable signs during the Age of Pisces. For example Aldebaran has moved over the last six thousand years from the tropical sign of Aries, through Taurus to its current position in Gemini. It will again enter the cardinal sign of Cancer in the Age of Aquarius. These four stars are now once again approaching the cardinal points of the solstices and equinoxes. In the Age of Aquarius, Fomalhaut will become the northern spring star, occupying the cardinal point of the sky, and likewise Aldebaran will be the star of the summer solstice, Regulus the star of the autumn equinox, and Antares the star of the winter solstice.